Tesco to take on Spotify and Kindle with Blinkbox music and books brands this year

Retail behemoth Tesco will park its tanks on the lawns of digital music and books businesses when it launches two new services later this year.

The tongue-tieing Blinkboxmusic and Blinkboxbooks launch notices follow Tesco’s takeovers of music provider WE7 and ebook retailer Mobcast in 2012.

Under their new brands, both will benefit not only from Tesco’s enormous reach but from names which tell new customers what they’re for – a rare find in the zany world of online identity.

WE7’s streaming radio will power Blinkboxmusic from Tesco

Read Recombu Digital’s guide to Blinkbox and Clubcard TVTesco Digital Entertainment boss Michael Comish said: “Tesco is one of the UK’s leading retailers of movies and TV, music and books. How customers choose to enjoy those products is changing rapidly as technology changes the way we shop.

“The development of these new services demonstrates our total commitment to providing the very best entertainment as easily as possible for our customers. They allow us to provide even more choice in how customers buy and enjoy their entertainment.”

Clubcard TV is currently in a closed beta test, using the Blinkbox library to offer Tesco Clubcard customers free films and TV episodes supported by advertising.

Mobcast is a cloud-based bookshop like Amazon Kindle, available on many devices, with a catalogue of more than 130,000 of the UK’s most popular titles.

The business was co-founded by former SAS soldier-turned-author Andy McNab and also supplies ebooks through Orange and T-Mobile.

WE7, co-founded by former Genesis front man Peter Gabriel, provides personalised streaming radio stations, with a catalogue of more than 11 million songs.

Its ad-funded model fits with Clubcard TV, and users also get 50 free requests a month to hear particular songs or albums instead of the automated stream.